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To: Professor Dotcomm who wrote (62066)	12/18/2000 7:52:38 PM
From: d:oug	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116766

Professor Dotcomm, Your post on Apples & Oranges comparison i found interesting. Seems that the cost of growing apples and oranges these past for example 20 years has not been helped very much by advances in technology. Most likely the cost of that 5 cents apple in 1980 is very close to being equal to today's 50 cent same apple. But as you described very well as food for thought the computers have advanced greatly unlike the apple in both how its made and what it becomes. Another example for folks over 50 who did not have a job profession that let them observe the changes in computers these many years since IBM made the first huge in size and cost for military use could be my simple observation that today at BJ's or SAM's warehouse store i can buy a nice color t.v. for $99 of which it might have been $99 in 1980 for a similiar viewing size black & white t.v. Maby soon scientist will zap an apple seed so that each apple will grow to the size of a watermellon. What i post next may be off topic to those who see no connection to the failuring dot-coms and gold prices, and if so, then so, but please read on and help me and others still looking for that nasty named web site that has people vote for the next dot-bomb crash & burn. I got this from the Dutch Central Bank thread and asked for help there, but so far no help. From: Alan Whirlwind There is some internet site devoted entirely to dotcoms that have risen to glory and disintigrated. The list is fairly lengthy. Some dirtyword with a dotcom at the end is supposed to get you to the site, but I forget which dirty word. I think anything that makes it another six months will likely be around awhile. --Alan From: Doug A K I tried many combinations of dirty words but no luck in getting to that place, places i was taken to did show many combinations of expressions of dirty words by men + woman + **. I did find one place of those dot com already failed, but i believe that dirty word web site you mentioned also has a contest of sorts where people voted for which next dot com will fail. search.thestandard.com If you learned of that url then please in a non dirty way please post it, for example, f***-dot-coms.com Others i heard about but did not work are as follows dot bombs .com dot com failures .com thanks doug

To: Professor Dotcomm who wrote (62066)	6/18/2001 3:15:08 PM
From: long-gone	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116766

Homeless shelters housing dot-com casualties SAN JOSE, Calif. (June 17, 2001 11:25 a.m. EDT ) - Mike Schlenz recently lost his job installing computer networks. He'd been sleeping in his Honda Civic for three months before he made the move to a homeless shelter. John Sacrosante, who earned more than $100,000 a year as a free-lance database engineer, spent his 39th birthday last week with the "brothers" he met at the church shelter where he has been living. Both are casualties of the dot-com bust in Silicon Valley, where a surprising number of former high-tech workers are rubbing elbows with society's castaways - the mentally ill, drug addicts and other hard-luck cases - in homeless shelters. "We're all equal here," Sacrosante said. "When you're used to making six figures and working in a dynamic and exciting environment and all of a sudden it goes away, you do have a nice little world of depression going on." Nearly 30 unemployed tech workers are among the 100 men at the Montgomery Street Inn and other shelters in San Jose run by InnVision, said Robbie Reinhart, director of the nonprofit organization. "They're not what we used to call hobos on the street. Most have college degrees," she said. Dot-com failures sent San Francisco's unemployment rate up to 4.2 percent in May from a rock-bottom 2.6 percent a year ago - with 18,000 people added, according to a state report. In Santa Clara County, the heart of Silicon Valley, layoffs in electronic equipment manufacturing and business services rose for the fifth straight month, contributing to a 3.2 percent unemployment rate in May. Reinhart said most of the tech workers she sees have had their contracts canceled or been laid off from start-ups and other smaller technology companies. Other shelter residents still have jobs but don't make enough to afford the high price of living alone in the valley, she said. Top consultants and contractors once named their salaries in the valley. Now, even those who qualify for unemployment benefits soon discover the $40 to $230 weekly check will not cover an apartment here, where rent averages around $1,800 a month. Suicide and crisis hotline operators in San Francisco and Santa Clara counties report that job-related calls nearly doubled from October to April. Many callers complained of lost jobs or feared they would soon be out of work. "There have always been layoffs and economic downturns, but what makes this unusual is that people in the valley have become appendages of their jobs and their workplace. They've worked up to 110 hours per week and slept on the conference room floor," said Ilene Philipson, a clinical psychologist at the Center for Working Families at the University of California at Berkeley. "People have given up all sorts of things to give to their job, and when there's a layoff there's no other support for them." Schlenz, 35, a Bay Area native with a degree in environmental chemistry, made as much as $60,000 a year as a free-lance contractor, installing Unix networks, configuring routers and working in desktop support for small companies. Then his jobs disappeared. "I'd been to all the job fairs. I'd followed up on all the resumes," he said. "Some of the larger companies approached me several times, but then kept leading me on for months. Departments were downsized and outsourced. Recruiters just stopped returning messages." Schlenz still has some stock, but the value has dropped. "I cashed in half my stocks to eat. I couldn't even afford gas anymore," he said. He gave up his apartment after running out of cash, and "car-camped" behind a bookstore. He showered at a gym where his membership was good through May. Someone told him he could get a meal at the Montgomery Street Inn, where he now stays. He volunteers in the shelter's computer lab, teaching residents how to use computers. The Inn has the same policy for all its residents - stay free for a month, then pay $45 a week, whether they have a job or not. Sacrosante was laid off shortly after moving from San Jose to Phoenix to work on what was supposed to be a six-month project. He came back to San Jose three weeks ago with the promise of being hired by one of two Santa Clara-based technical training companies. The offers fell through. There's an only-in-Silicon Valley twist to his story: Sacrosante and three other former high-tech workers who met at the shelter are launching a start-up business that will resell wearable mobile computing systems. Sacrosante said he will use some of the funding he secured for the venture to rent a house. Schlenz is still waiting for his lucky break. He said he has applied for an entry-level position, something for which he is overqualified, at Oracle Corp. He hasn't told his mother in Arkansas about his situation. "She'd worry," he said. But he said he now has more of what it takes to make it when a top company hires him: "After this experience, I feel I have more determination than other people." technology News Copyright © 2001 Interest!ALERT interestalert.com